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Life imprisonment is any sentence of imprisonment for a crime under which convicted people are to remain in prison for the rest of their natural lives or indefinitely until pardoned, paroled, or otherwise commuted to a fixed term. Crimes for which, in some countries, a person could receive this sentence include murder, torture, terrorism, child abuse resulting in death, rape, espionage, treason, drug trafficking, drug possession, human trafficking, severe fraud and financial crimes, aggravated criminal damage, arson, kidnapping, burglary, and robbery, piracy, aircraft hijacking, and genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes or any three felonies in case of three-strikes law. Life imprisonment can also be imposed, in certain countries, for traffic offences causing death. Life imprisonment is not used in all countries; Portugal was the first country to abolish life imprisonment, in 1885.
In the United States, capital punishment is a legal penalty in 27 states, American Samoa, by the federal government, and the military, and is abolished in 23 states. Capital punishment is, in practice, only applied for aggravated murder. Although it is a legal penalty in 27 states, only 20 states have the ability to execute death sentences, with the other seven, as well as the federal government, being subject to different types of moratoriums. The existence of capital punishment in the United States can be traced to early colonial Virginia. Along with Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore, the United States is one of five advanced democracies and the only Western nation that applies the death penalty regularly. It is one of 54 countries worldwide applying it, and was the first to develop lethal injection as a method of execution, which has since been adopted by five other countries. The Philippines has since abolished executions, and Guatemala has done so for civil offenses, leaving the United States as one of four countries to still use this method. It is common practice for the condemned to be administered sedatives prior to execution, regardless of the method used.
Capital punishment is a legal penalty under the criminal justice system of the United States federal government. It can be imposed for treason, espionage, murder, large-scale drug trafficking, or attempted murder of a witness, juror, or court officer in certain cases.
In the U.S. state of California, capital punishment is a legal penalty. However it is not allowed to be carried out as of March 2019, because executions were halted by an official moratorium ordered by Governor Gavin Newsom. Prior to the moratorium, executions were frozen by a federal court order since 2006, and the litigation resulting in the court order has been on hold since the promulgation of the moratorium. Thus, there will be a court-ordered moratorium on executions after the termination of Newsom's moratorium if capital punishment remains a legal penalty in California by then.
San Quentin State Prison (SQ) is a California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation state prison for men, located north of San Francisco in the unincorporated place of San Quentin in Marin County.
Clinton Correctional Facility is a New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision maximum security state prison for men located in the Village of Dannemora, New York. The prison is sometimes colloquially referred to as Dannemora, although its name is derived from its location in Clinton County, New York. The southern perimeter wall of the prison borders New York State Route 374. Church of St. Dismas, the Good Thief, a church built by inmates, is located within the walls. The prison is sometimes referred to as New York's Little Siberia, due to the cold winters in Dannemora and the isolation of the upstate area. It is the largest maximum security prison and the third oldest prison in New York. The staff includes about a thousand officers and supervisors.
William C. Holman Correctional Facility is an Alabama Department of Corrections prison located in unincorporated southwestern Escambia County, Alabama. The facility is along Alabama State Highway 21, 9 miles (14 km) north of Atmore in southern Alabama.
The Southern Ohio Correctional Facility is a maximum security prison located just outside Lucasville in Scioto County, Ohio. The prison was constructed in 1972. As of 2022, the warden is Donald Redwood.
Menard Correctional Center, known prior to 1970 as Southern Illinois Penitentiary, is an Illinois state prison located in the town of Chester in Randolph County, Illinois. It houses maximum-security and high medium-security adult males. The average daily population as of 2007 is 3,410.
The Angola Three are three African-American former prison inmates who were held for decades in solitary confinement while imprisoned at Louisiana State Penitentiary. The latter two were indicted in April 1972 for the killing of a prison corrections officer; they were convicted in January 1974. Wallace and Woodfox served more than 40 years each in solitary, the "longest period of solitary confinement in American prison history."
This is a list of notable overturned convictions in the United States.
Capital punishment in Connecticut formerly existed as an available sanction for a criminal defendant upon conviction for the commission of a capital offense. Since the 1976 United States Supreme Court decision in Gregg v. Georgia until Connecticut repealed capital punishment in 2012, Connecticut had only executed one person, Michael Bruce Ross in 2005. Initially, the 2012 law allowed executions to proceed for those still on death row and convicted under the previous law, but on August 13, 2015, the Connecticut Supreme Court ruled that applying the death penalty only for past cases was unconstitutional.
Kent Bowers was a Belizean man convicted of murder and executed by Belize. He is the most recent person to have been executed in Belize.
The Union Correctional Institution, formerly referred to as Florida State Prison, Raiford Prison and State Prison Farm is a Florida Department of Corrections state prison located in unincorporated Union County, Florida, near Raiford.
Romell Broom was an American death row inmate who was convicted of murder, kidnapping and rape. He was sentenced to death for the 1984 murder of 14-year-old Tryna Middleton. Broom was scheduled to be executed on September 15, 2009, but after executioners failed to locate a vein he was granted a reprieve. A second execution attempt was scheduled for June 2020, which was delayed until March 2022. Broom died in prison before the sentence could be carried out.
Glenn Ford was convicted of murder in 1984 and released from Angola Prison in March 2014 after a full exoneration. Ford was born in Shreveport, Louisiana. He was the longest serving death row inmate in the United States to be fully exonerated before his death. He was denied compensation by the state of Louisiana for his wrongful conviction.
Raymond George Riles is an American prisoner who was on death row in Texas from 1976 until he was resentenced to life imprisonment in June 2021. At the time of his resentencing, Riles had been on death row longer than anyone else in the United States. He was convicted of the December 1974 capital murder of John Henry, a Houston used car salesman. Riles was ruled competent to stand trial in the 1970s, but while on death row he was repeatedly found to be too mentally ill to execute.
The State Correctional Institution – Phoenix is a state prison in Skippack Township, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, with a Collegeville postal address, within the Philadelphia metropolitan area. Operated by the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, it was named after the phoenix bird.
Madison v. Alabama, 586 U.S. ___ (2019), was a United States Supreme Court case regarding the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution, barring cruel and unusual punishment. The case deals with whether the Eighth Amendment prohibits executing a person for a crime they do not remember.
References
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Death row inmate Glenford Baptist has sentence changed". The Guardian. Belize. December 23, 2015. Retrieved January 5, 2016.
- ↑ "Longest Serving Death Row Prisoner Is Off Hangman's List". 7 News Belize. July 13, 2015. Retrieved January 6, 2016.
- ↑ "14 Years On Death Row". Channel 5. Archived from the original on February 4, 2016. Retrieved January 5, 2016.